Grease: Pop-culture icon's energy keeps it popular

Starring John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, Stockard Channing

Screenplay by Bronte Woodard, based on the stage musical by Jim Jacobs
and Warren Casey

Directed by Randal Kleiser

Grease is the word, or rather, Grease is the world. A
hugely popular movie when first released in 1978, a force behind the
best-selling soundtrack for the 20 years since, very successful now in its
anniversary rerelease (no, there are no computer-generated characters
making cameo appearances; only the soundtrack was remastered) -
Grease exists in the rarefied strata of pop culture, simultaneously
primal and highly postmodern in its appeal, as artificial as the milieu it
depicts.

The time is the 1950s, the location is Rydell High School, the
characters are a group of high school seniors (gamely played by a
mismatched array of 30ish actors), the genre is musical. Danny (limber John
Travolta) meets sweet Sandy (Olivia Newton-John) over the summer, then,
when the classes start, peer pressure keeps them apart - at least until
they work it out and get back together. The above is a highly exhaustive
summary of the plot. The time when Danny and Sandy are falling in love is
not chronicled (the opening shot finds them parting on the beach,
presumably after a summer spent together). During the rest of the movie,
one would expect them braving the barriers between them, but that pretty
much isn't shown either. There are a couple of minor quarrels between them
(Danny is afraid to admit his affection to Sandy when surrounded by
sarcastic pals; however, very shortly, he apologizes, and all is forgiven),
but this is definitely not your usual "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy
gets girl back" type of story.

Frankly speaking, Grease is not much of a story at all - a couple
of conflicts are not enough to propel the plot forward, and those conflicts
are minor as well. For example, some (not much) screen time is devoted to
Danny's leather-wearing, fast-car-driving, Elvis-haired pals fighting
another group of leather-wearing, fast-car-driving, Elvis-haired guys, who
are bad because - let me think - because, I guess, all of them are chewing
gum and none of them is played by John Travolta. This subplot crops up
sporadically and is resolved almost off-handedly, which is, actually, true
in the case of all subplots.

No, the force that drives the movie forward is something completely
different. Grease is a musical, and it's not a classic-story-with-
songs-added-later type of musical, where the songs are important but not
essential. It is an outright, conceived-as-such, owning-the-birthright,
gotta-sing-it-or-else type of musical. Song 'n' dance numbers are frequent,
eye-grabbing, not highly memorable, but very energetic (perhaps too much
so; I would like to hear a couple of slower ones, like "Hopelessly Devoted
To You" without the underlying bass beat).

These days, no one makes movie musicals; it seems that the audience
can't swallow characters suddenly bursting into song. The only exceptions,
of course, are animated musicals where, quite likely, the overall
artificiality of what's happening onscreen helps to suspend the disbelief
to such a degree that it doesn't really matter that sometime, yes, some
singing's got to be done.

And this, possibly, is the best explanation of the enduring popularity
of Grease: multiple levels of make-believe turning this movie into a
pop-culture icon, something that is so removed from any kind of reality
that it has to be analyzed solely on its own terms. Let me count the ways.
First, it's a movie. Next, it's a musical. Then, the time it depicts can
hardly be called the time of natural behavior (just witness the tight
leather outfits and ridiculous greased hairdos). Plus, the actors are
clearly much older than their characters. Also, the movie is done 20 years
after the fact, making it more of a homage to the good old times (1950s).
Now, it's re-released, making it a homage to the time when it first came
out (1970s). To compound the issue, quite a few scenes cause the sudden
recognition as the source of latter cultural and cinematic quotations (yes,
this is why Vincent Vega, Travolta's character in Pulp Fiction, goes
into the 1950s-themed restaurant and orders a burger and a cherry coke) -
and the layers of cultural reference build up and hang onto other like
multiply-hyphenated words in this review.

But I have to admit that, on its own terms, Grease works very
well, as well as any good pop song. It's got rhythm. It's about love. It's
easy on the eyes and ears. It's all in major key. There are just a few
serious notes (all of them, without exception, provided by one and only
truly great performance - Stockard Channing as promiscuously tough Rizzo,
the leader of Pink Ladies), all of which resolve into the same major
chords. In this way, I suppose, Grease is truly a classic - a movie
for those who can't stand classical music, but would gladly listen for
hours to an oldies radio station, where the most important lyrics are
"ramalama-dingdong" and the word "Elvis" rhymes solely with "pelvis."